In Don's room the light was grey but he didn't notice it at all. He sat against the wall, on his bed, and stared at the poster, eyes puffed and bloodshot, hands palsied at his sides. He wore only his shorts, and his chest barely moved.
His mother had checked on him shortly after breakfast, and he had stared at her until she had backed out and closed the door.
His father hadn't come to see him at all.
He didn't mind.
He was working on a new set of Rules.
The telephone rang.
Tracey bolted from the couch and raced for the kitchen, but by the time she got there her mother had already answered. An aunt, by the sound of it, and she waited until she knew it would be one of those long, Sunday conversations that mixed with the aromas of Sunday dinner and the quiet of Sunday afternoons, when the house was ordered peaceful, a fiat from her father.
Later, she thought; I'll call Don later.
Brian was worried about the size of his neck. Several times before he left the house he checked himself in the hall mirror to see if it was getting too bulky, too thick. He didn't want to end up like Tar or Fleet, with necks sticking out to the ends of their shoulders, looking like goofballs and sounding like they had cotton shoved halfway down their throats. He wanted to look as normal as possible. A thick neck meant you were dim-witted and stupid to those assholes out there, and he wasn't kidding himself—once his professional career on the field was over he would have to make it in a real job, and you don't get real jobs if you look stupid, or bloated, or like your face had been stomped on by a herd of elephants.
Now he adjusted the rearview mirror and pulled at the top of the sweater, just to be sure nothing had changed in the past five minutes.
"Jesus Christ!" Tar yelled, cringing back in his seat. "Will you for Christ's sake look where you're going?"
A bus horn blared. Brian yanked the wheel hard to the right, back to the left, and grinned as the car held on the rain-slick blacktop. "No sweat."
"No sweat, fuck you, pal," Tar said. He wriggled lower until he could prop his knees up on the dashboard, his head barely rising above the edge of the door.
"Chicken?" Brian asked with a grin.
"Careful."
He laughed, shook his head, and swerved off the boulevard onto a street that took a sudden plunge down halfway along the block. They were headed for the flat below the school, and after checking his neck once again, Brian glanced into the backseat to make sure they had everything.
"I still think," Tar muttered, "we should've made Fleet come, y'know?
Hell, it was practically his stupid idea in the first place."
Brian shrugged. He didn't give a damn. Fleet Robinson had sort of dropped out anyway, ever since he picked up Amanda Adler and got into her pants. Not, he thought with a palm rubbing over his chest, that he wouldn't mind it either. She wasn't all that bad, considering she didn't have much in the tits-and-ass department. He guessed Fleet was into something different, like that ass-long pony tail of hers. Maybe she whips him with it or something. He grinned. Maybe she does.
Tar was right though. The creep oughta be here, with them, driving into a place that looked like God forgot to clean up. The houses were ancient and falling apart; there was silt over everything now that it had rained, from the factories whose smokestacks rose glumly above the trees. You could hardly tell it was the same town, and he wondered why all the girls who came from down here had the best bodies.
"Jesus, what a dump," Tar said, his chin hard on his chest. His hair was short, dark, cropped high over his ears; his face was pale in the late afternoon's dim light. He sniffed, and fumbled in his shirt pocket for a cigarette, lit it, and rolled the window down to let out the smoke.
Brian hated smoke.
Another right, and Brian slowed to not much faster than a brisk walk.
Since they'd left the boulevard they hadn't seen a single car or a single person. Early dinner for the rubes, he thought. He snapped his fingers, and Tar groaned as he unfolded himself, reached into the backseat and pulled the two plastic garbage bags to the front. He stuffed them carefully into the well between his legs, and rolled the window down a bit more. Despite the ties that held the bags closed, he could still smell the crap, and he wiped his hands on his jeans.
"Beautiful," Brian said.
"Fleet oughta be here."
"Jesus, will you give it a rest, Boston? He ain't, and that's that, and besides, he'll regret it when he sees the look on the Tube's face tomorrow morning."
Tar considered it and decided Brian was right. As usual. Even when he was wrong.
A left, a right, and Brian pulled to the curb on a deserted street, the homes here in considerably better shape than the ones they had passed.
They were still old, and still looked as if their owners made less than a buck an hour, but the tiny lawns were well kept, the houses clean and painted, and no rusted hulks cluttered the road.
Water dripped from the leaves onto the roof, loudly.
Brian rubbed his hands together and leaned over the steering wheel to peer through the windshield. "There," he said, pointing. "The green one, two in from the corner."
Tar followed the finger's direction and nodded. Then he checked the neighborhood again. "What the hell is he doing living down here, man? The way he talks you think he lived in fucking Scarsdale or something." He peered at the nearest house.
"Maybe we got the wrong address."
"No," Brian said, though he'd been thinking the same thing. "He probably lives in the same house he was born in. Too fucking lazy to move out."
"Maybe he's got a secret lab in the cellar, where he experiments on women."
"The Tube? You gotta be kidding. If you were a girl, would you want that thing on top of you?"
Tar shuddered, and laughed, and took a deep breath. "Y'know, our ass is doomed if we get caught."
"Shut up, Boston, okay? We're not getting caught, and besides, we voted the fucker deserved it, right?"
Tar didn't need to think about that one. "Right. But I still don't get why we don't just bash the Duck's face in. That black eye of his would be the best thing left on his body."
"Because," Brian said, wondering why Tar had to think so much all the time.
"Because why?"
"Jesus, are you stupid or what?"
"I ain't stupid. I just think—"
"Look," Brian said, his hands kneading the wheel, "we bash up the Duck and everyone knows who did it, right? His old man comes down on us like we were killers or something, and we won't see graduation from the ass end of a warden. But we do this, Tar baby, and the Duck gets creamed. His old man creams him, Hedley creams him, and maybe even if we get lucky the frigging cops cream him too. So what the hell's the bitch?"
Tar didn't know. He supposed it made sense. "All right," he said. "But if we sit here much longer, someone's gonna call the cops on us, not the Duck."
Brian grunted his agreement and checked the green house again. "Okay. We'll go around the corner. I'll keep the engine running, and for Christ's sake, don't forget the other thing, all right?"
As Brian pulled away from the curb, Tar scrubbed a fist over a nose that'd been broken three times since he was a freshman. "I could use some help. That's why Fleet was supposed to be here, in case you didn't know."
"I know, I know, okay?"
"So help."
"So you run faster than me, okay?"
"Not that much faster," Tar muttered as they rounded the corner and parked on the left, facing traffic.
There was no time for further argument. As soon as the car stopped, he was out with the bags and running hunched over back to the green house.
He sprinted up the walk, turned once in a circle, and heaved them both against the front door. He was already back on the pavement when they hit, when they burst open, when they spilled dog shit and rotten eggs and vinegar onto the porch. There was a low hedge in front of the property, and just as he veered onto the sidewalk he dropped D
on Boyd's windbreaker onto it, dragging a sleeve until he was sure it had caught.
Then he was back in the car, Brian pulling away before the door shut. He didn't drive so fast as to leave rubber, but fast enough to have them out of sight by the time Adam Hedley responded to the thumps upstairs and left his basement, his plaid robe tied tightly around him, his nose already wrinkling in disgust before he took hold of the knob and pulled the door to him.
Brian didn't laugh as he headed back up the hill. He just looked at Tar with a grin that never reached his eyes.
"Mission," he said, "accomplished."
Something moved in the rain.
It passed across streets without making a sound; it passed under streetlamps without leaving a shadow; it walked through a puddle and the water remained still; it brushed by a hedge and the branches didn't move.
A dog on the porch next to Adam Hedley's home began yapping, pulling at the leash that held it to the door, howling once, snarling, then cowering with a whimper against the welcome mat when it moved up the walk and fixed the terrier with a stare, turned around, and moved away; and the dog began trembling, snapping at its legs, growling at its tail, urinating on the mat and foaming slightly at the mouth.
Something moved in the rain, without making a sound.
The room was large and perfect. The furniture was new enough to keep its shine and already old enough to be comfortable when used: the bed was canopied just the way Chris liked it, the desk and chair were straight from Regent Street in London, the soft rainbow rug from India, the loveseat under the window from a little shop in SoHo she had discovered two years ago. The walls were papered in white and flocked gold, the ceiling freshly plastered, the alabaster lamps with just the right touch of frills but not so feminine that it looked like a room belonging to a girl who wanted only a husband and two kids to complete her life. In the far corner was an upright piano, sheet music piled on the bench and ready to fall.
Next to the desk was an open door leading into her private bathroom. It had been one of the requirements for her agreeing to leave Manhattan—that she have as much a private environment as possible to keep the rest of the house out of her affairs, if not out of her life; had she thought it possible she would have lobbied for a private entrance as well, but that would have been pushing it. Her father, indulgent to the point of easy manipulation, would have balked, no question about it, and might possibly have sent her to that damned fancy school in Vermont where all she'd have to look at were other girls, some trees, and herds of stupid cows.
Her mother didn't care one way or the other; she spent most of her time writing ten-page letters to her two older children in Yale and Vassar, and flying down to Florida to visit her own mother.
It was, then, as perfect as she could have it, and whatever complaints she had she kept to herself.
She brushed her hair at the bathroom mirror, turning side to side, scowling at the thought of having to wash it again. She hated it-the washing, the drying, the constant brushing to keep it gleaming. She wished she could cut it off and dye her scalp blue like the Picts did for the Romans. But if she cut it off, she would look like a freak, and looking like a freak was not part of the plan.
The bath towel began slipping off her chest and she grabbed for it with an oath, held it while she flicked off the lights and walked into the dark bedroom. A reach for the wall switch was pulled back. Not yet, she thought. She wanted to stay in the dark a while longer, listening to the rain run down her window, listening to the blessed silence that meant she was alone. A sigh, contented, and she padded across the warm rug to the cushioned window seat, sat, and pulled her legs up so she could hug them and look out. There wasn't all that much to see, not while it was raining, not after sunset, but the lights in the houses beyond the yard were still visible, and growing brighter as the leaves were pounded from their branches.
The towel slipped a bit more; she didn't touch it.
She put a palm against a pane and shivered at the cold, pressed her head beside it, and tried to see the Boyds' backyard. It was too far away and blocked by too many trees, but she saw it, and she saw Don, and she saw his father.
She wondered if either of them would understand what she was doing, if Don would be very hurt if he knew he was included. Norman, she thought, wouldn't be any trouble. Certainly not from the way he looked at her yesterday when she was walking away from his son, or the way he smiled at her whenever she could think of an excuse to talk to him in his office.
He wasn't stupid. She damned well knew he knew the plan. He understood why she was going to stay in this damned dirty town until she graduated from its mediocre high school with the highest grades she could get, no matter how she got them; he sure as hell understood that a flower in a drab garden was brighter than a flower among her sisters, especially when the flower had the pick of the men who tended that garden—in a place like this, she was a goddamned champion orchid.
Her mother had chosen to be a shadow, and she had paid; her friends were too busy turning every job and love offer into political statements.
Chris, on the other hand, knew she was in a war, and only assholes and bitches didn't use their best weapons.
Norman understood, she could see it in his eyes; Don would, eventually, but not before. Not before she was ready.
A shadow down in the yard.
She peered, wiped the pane, and peered again.
And sighed.
It wasn't Don, and Norman wasn't that stupid.
It was a cat, and she grinned at it while she stretched and purred and thought about how the next phase should open.
Something moved in the rain, and Sergeant Quintero in his patrol car heard it in an alley. He was waiting for Verona to get out of the John in the bar, declining to go in himself and wait because he knew he would see women there. On Sunday. Even on Sunday there would be a woman on a stool, having a drink, talking with the barkeep, waiting for her date to show up and take her home. It made him sick, and he refused to go in when Tom had decided he'd had enough of the car's useless shocks. Jarred his kidneys, he said as he slid out and walked away; Quintero only grunted, and rolled down the window to breathe the fresh air.
And heard it in the alley.
He stared for a moment, figuring it was a rummy looking for a place to sleep, looked at the rain, and decided to leave the bum alone.
Then he heard it again, moving away, slowly.
It sounded like someone thumping soft dirt with a shovel.
He glanced at the bar's closed door, then shrugged and pulled his jacket collar up over his neck. He climbed out and touched a hand to his left side to be sure the gun was there, then scowled at the drizzle and moved to the mouth of the alley.
It was dark.
At the back, he knew from rousting Saturday night drunks, was a broken-down wooden fence that led to a backyard. A kid could squeeze through; a grown man would have to swear and climb over.
Wood splintered then, echoing like gunshots, and reflex had him running, revolver in hand, eyes squinting through the mist. But despite the faint light from the street behind and the homes ahead, he could see nothing, not even when he reached the fence and saw the gaping hole.
A tank, he thought; someone's driven a tank through it.
He searched for a culprit, in the alley and the adjoining backyard, and decided it was a drunk in a stumbling hurry to get home.
Another five minutes before he holstered his weapon and headed back toward the car.
And behind him, softly, something moved in the rain.
"It's like going to the same funeral twice a month," Tracey said to Jeff as they walked down the stadium steps to have lunch. "She lives in this really creepy apartment, a fourth-floor walkup in the middle of a block that looks like it's been bombed. My father's been trying to get her to move out since Grandfather died two years ago, but she says all her friends are still there and she just won't budge."
Jeff pushed a forefinger against his glasses to shove them b
ack along his nose, and grinned as they sat, opening their lunch bags and taking out the food. They had bought cartons of milk in the cafeteria, and oranges for dessert, and when they didn't see Don there, they thought he might be outside. Sunday's rain was gone though the clouds had stayed behind, and the temperature had risen as if the sun were shining.
He sighed as he scanned the seats, still dark with moisture. "Don't see him."
"Well, he was in math."
"Did he say anything?"
She shook her head, and a wide fall of hair slipped from behind her ear to cover her eye. "He looked like hell though. He looked like he hadn't slept all weekend."
They ate in silence, not close enough to touch, but close enough to sense they were alone out here.
"Trace?"
She looked at him absently, and wondered why he didn't have a girlfriend. He wasn't bad-looking in spite of the thick glasses, he kept his outdated long hair gleaming like a girl's, and when he wanted to be, he was pretty funny in a sarcastic sort of way. She supposed it was because he was third string on the football team, which didn't make him anywhere near a hero, and something less than the fans who crowded the stands at home games. A bad spot, she imagined, and a little silly too.
"Hey," he said, rapping knuckles on her forehead. "Hey, are you in there?"
She laughed. "Yeah."
"Thinking about Don?"
She shrugged; not a lie, not the truth.
"You going to the concert Wednesday if it doesn't rain?"
"I think so."
"He ask you yet?"
That's what her mother had asked her that morning, and yesterday night, and yesterday afternoon. But she wouldn't let Tracey call him. It was not the way, she was told sternly; the proper way is for the boy to call first. Only, Maria Quintero didn't know Donald Boyd. Tracey knew he had enjoyed their date as much as she had, and she knew, too, she should have said something to him when he had walked her home. But then there had been the kiss, and the running away.
And as soon as she had realized her mistake, up there in her room, she'd started out again, to stop him from leaving, and her father had walked in from the kitchen. He had been dressed in street clothes, explaining quickly he was working double shifts from now on with Detective Verona, hoping to keep the Howler from striking again in this town.
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